Apple Podcasts demonstrate 'Browse By Hosts And Guests'; changes at Libsyn

• Apple Podcasts has demonstrated “browse by hosts and guests”, showing Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend's guests (and if you’re running iOS 13, you can see that too). We also found it in the desktop app in MacOS Catalina. The documentation for the feature, earlier this year, describes the image requirements but just says “these search enhancements will first be available for selected top shows in English”; we can’t see any evidence of them in the podcast’s RSS feed, and the guests appear not to include Conan’s latest guest, David Letterman, highlighting that this may be a manual process.

  • Question: are Apple moving away from RSS? Is that a good thing?

• Apple’s also highlighted Search the Audio, the Apple Podcasts feature which searches transcripts, much like Google also does. This has been live for a few weeks for some select podcasts, but has not been highlighted in this way. This highlight appears in the iOS app after updating to iOS 13.1.2.

• BREAKING: Podcast host Libsyn has reached a settlement with their disgruntled shareholders, led by Camac. Libsyn has agreed to many of Camac’s demands - Camac’s founder Eric Shahinian is now Libsyn’s new Chairman; some payments to Libsyn’s CEO and former CFO have been cancelled; a new independent director will also be appointed, as will Bradley Tirpack; and Libsyn will pay Camac $600,000 for their expenses. Shahinian, 31, is an investor; Tirpak, 49, has variously worked for a dentist, a mining company and a vending company in the past four years, and works to improve corporate governance. Libsyn’s CFO resigned last week; the special shareholder’s meeting has been cancelled.

• Stitcher podcasts are now represented in Australia by Whooshkaa, opening up Midroll podcasts to Australian advertisers. The company got IAB Certification in May, has its own Alexa integration, and we’ve covered similar Whooshkaa deals with WYNC, Wondery and Australian radio network ARN.

• Stitcher are also now represented by The Podcast Exchange in Canada.

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• Podtrac have released their top podcast publishers for September 2019. The data is US-only. iHeartRadio have fallen back to #2; and Kast Media is a new entrant to the chart at #10.

  
  Aug 17 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • In the 'top marks for spin’ department: Inside Radio, which is owned by iHeart, says: “By number of shows, iHeart remains the clear victor”.

• At the recent Madrid Podcast Day, Spanish podcast app iVoox was poised to launch a second round of iVoox Originals: unlike other podcast platforms, iVoox works with existing popular Spanish podcasts to move them exclusively inside the iVoox app. Speaking to Podnews, the company says that increased visibility inside the app and marketing for each podcast quickly replaces any loss of audience from removing them from other platforms, and podcasters also get a guaranteed minimum fee based on active subscribers.

• No DAW required: Resonate Recordings have released the Resonate Recorder, a browser-based recording tool for USB microphones, allowing simple recordings to be made without digging out that copy of Audacity, Hindenburg or Pro Tools.

• Podcast host Captivate now has Spotify passthrough, which means Spotify stats appear in the same place as the rest of stats on the Captivate platform.

  
  Aug 17 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Testing… you’ll see a new “Podcast events” list at the bottom of this email, pulling data from a new service from Dave Jackson. We’d welcome feedback.

Podcasts

New independent series MOONFACE debuts tomorrow. It’s a generational coming-of-age story between an Korean American son and his immigrant mother. He wants to finally open up to her by coming out, except they can’t speak the same language. All episodes are released tomorrow; creator James Kim is a producer for Gimlet. (Anchor)

Reset, a new podcast from Recode by Vox, thinks that every story is a tech story. We live in a world where algorithms drive our interests, scientists are re-engineering our food supply, and a robot may be your next boss. It kicks off October 15th: our podcast has the trailer. (Recode / Stitcher / ART19)

Museum Archipelago, a “tiny show” about museums, just launched its Museums in the Balkans miniseries, starting with the Museum of Humour and Satire in the Bulgarian mountains. Host Ian Elsner will continue his exploration of museums closer to home next week at Sound Education 2019 with a talk called "Museums and Podcasting: Examining Cultural Power.” (Fireside)